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Tour two of Minh Phu’s super-intensive and extensive shrimp farms

By Dan Gibson | Published Aug. 18, 2023

Visitors to the 2023 Shrimp Summit in Vietnam were taken to Minh Phu Seafood Corporation's new super-intensive vannamei shrimp farm at Loc An, where the company has been operating a 153t/ha farm since 2020. After the summit, guests were also taken to one of the company's extensive, low-density black tiger mangrove farming projects in Ca Mau province, at the very opposite end of farming intensity.

Published Aug. 18, 2023

Visitors to July’s Shrimp Summit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, were taken on a tour of Minh Phu Seafood Corporaton’s latest super-intensive shrimp farm, Minh Phu Loc An

The farm – the first to use Minh Phu’s so-called ‘2-3-4’ model, covers an area of 300 hectares, with a total of 834 ponds, ranging in size from 234 square meters to huge 1,784 square meter behemoths.

At the site, Minh Phu produces at a super-intensive stocking density of 170-190 pieces per square meter, up to a maximum size of 18 pcs/kg after 130-135 days of cultivation.

The ‘4’, meanwhile, stands for four ‘cleanliness factors’: disease-free postlarvae, clean water, clean environment and complete absence of antibiotics or chemicals, Minh Phu claims.

The ‘3’ in 2-3-4 stands for the three different size categories produced by Minh Phu at the site – 60-68pcs/kg, 30-32 pcs/kg, and 18-20 pcs/kg.

The farm’s floor is lined with tarpaulin and covered with mesh in an effort to prevent the intake of pathogens from the soil or birds.

The farm’s operations are then managed from this central hub, set up by Tomota.

Tomota staff explained the functions of the various tools in the control room to summit visitors.

Firstly, Tomota’s system uses cameras at Minh Phu Loc An to allow operators to oversee aeration and automatic feeder activity at every pond from the central control room.

Those cameras work in combination with a device monitoring service allowing farmers to see at a glance whether aerators and feeders are on, off, or even malfunctioning.

Further breakdowns of power consumption and energy costs between the various tools on site are also provided by Tomota's system.

Tomota’s software then displays projections showing outgoing costs, total revenue per harvest, and expected revenue from the farm.

The company also shows granular statistics of individual pond harvests. At Minh Phu Loc An, the farm is targeting an FCR of 1.4, but diseases such as EHP have made that difficult this summer, staff told Undercurrent News, claiming the pathogen originates in the broodstock.

The status of outgoing and pending shipments from the farm’s warehouse were also displayed.

Tomota also demonstrated its A3 kit, soon to hit the market, which allows farmers to test pond water for pH levels, alkalinity, nitrite, and total ammonia nitrogen, among other parameters.

Members of the Tomota team led summit visitors around Minh Phu Loc An farm and endeavored to both inform them and keep them from breaking anything important.

Water is supplied to the farm from a seawater pumping station which has been operating since October 2020, running three 132 kilowatt capacity machines pumping 2,300 cubic meters of water per hour. The stable supply of seawater is essential in allowing Minh Phu to produce three crops annually at the farm.

Such pumps are necessary in order to suck water from 2.5km out to sea from seven meters below the surface, and then push it 2km further inland to the farm, ending at a 25 hectare reservoir.

Visitors to Ca Mau province after the summit were also taken to a Minh Phu farming project at the completely opposite end of the intensity scale in the Mekong Delta.

Here, black tiger shrimp are produced in a low-stress, low-intensity mangrove farm. Approximately 20,000 hectares of such forest farms exist in the province.

Long, tubular nets are set up throughout the pond to catch any large shrimp that enter.

Farmers then use canoes to paddle out and collect any black tiger caught within.

Another good haul!

However, the main harvesting method is to conduct a partial harvest of the pond every two weeks.

A sluice gate is opened to allow water to exit the pond, bringing with it any shrimp in the vicinity.

Any shrimp passing through the gate are caught and collected in a net set up over the channel’s entrance by farmers.

For a group comprised entirely of shrimp farmers, processors, investors, and farm tech developers, the excitement of actually harvesting shrimp apparently never gets old.

Every year, this 6ha farm produces 1,095 kilos of black tiger shrimp using traditional farming methods – although it should be noted that roughly half the farming area consists of mangrove forest.

Helping to rebuild the mangrove forest in Ca Mau Cape National Park forms a key part of commitments made by both Minh Phu and Quoc Viet (now Green Seafood) to the area. As such, summit visitors were invited to venture onto platforms over soft estuary mud to plant new trees. Undercurrent News can confirm that nobody fell in.

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